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With the rift closed for the season and no more monsters to fight, Daelin Long gets bored as librarian in the podunk town of Settler, Oregon. A job interview and her brother's arrival present a tempting opportunity to escape, until her brother and her best friend, a ghost, disappear.

While Daelin searches for them, more mysteries pile up: dead people coming back to life, portraits of the town founders replaced with strange white trees, and people on the other side of the rift returning. It’s impossible. The portal that allows monsters from other universes to come to Earth is sealed until next summer.

The Rifters, a secret group protecting our world, believe the troubles are nothing more than the tantrums of an offended ghost. Daelin disagrees. If she’s right, the evil hell-bent on destroying Earth has new technology making the rift more deadly.

Before the monster summons the next apocalypse, Daelin must find it and destroy it.

Beside a gnarled juniper in the middle of the field separating town from the wilderness, Daelin Long spotted her sister again. She waved frantically and ran after her. “Charming, stop!”
Her sister wore normal clothes—khakis and a turtleneck—instead of garments from another universe. She pivoted on her heels and scooted around the other side of the tree. Daelin darted around the trunk. Charming was nowhere to be seen.
Daelin swept hair out of her face, but the wind insisted it stay over her eyes. “Where did you go?” She spun in slow circles, searching the horizon. The dirt road nearby led to the path that went out to the rift. Maybe Charming waited there.
Ignoring a wish for her winter coat, Daelin trotted onto the road, past Blackes Ranch Resort and Spa, and onto the trail to the two obsidian pillars. She found pine needles, rocks, and dirt, but no sign of her sister or any evidence the rift had opened. Her hand on one of the columns, Daelin sought the vibrations of other universes. They weren’t there. For now, the obsidian was obsidian and nothing more.
“How odd.”
“What’s odd? I’m not to start your lessons until mañana. You need your tattoo expanded first.”
Daelin whirled. Skulking behind her stood Trinidad Cepeda, a fellow Rifter, a general loon, and a direct descendent of Patrick Swit who was the founder of the Rifters. Messy black curls tumbled over her dark eyes, which darted restlessly in every direction. Barely five foot tall with an elfin face, she wore a cap fashioned from aluminum foil. Her small, calloused hand held the flimsy hat in place, otherwise the wind would take it.
“I thought… never mind.” How could Daelin confess anything serious to a woman who believed aluminum foil protected her? “What’s with the head gear? The rift is closed. Right?”
“You never know who’s watching. Evil comes from this world as well others. Our primero lesson together. Tonight.”
“You’ll be teaching me?” With any luck, the instructions wouldn’t involve adding pink flamingos to her sister’s garden of frogs.

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The Rifters [1]

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A junction erupts between the worlds.

The Gold Rush trickles to a fool’s quest and a string of stagecoach heists. In 1888, Earl Blacke decides to make a new start and become a better man. He escapes into the mountains, heading north. In the wilds of Oregon, a rift inside an ancient volcano opens and sends him into the future, into the present day. It also shaves forty years off his age, forty years to live over again and atone for what he’s done.

Starting over is hard to do. In current day New York, Daelin Long’s dream job at a publishing house goes the way of the dinosaurs her sister chases. With no money and nowhere else to go, Daelin accepts the librarian position in her sister’s dinky town in the middle of Oregon. Nestled inside ancient volcanic peaks, the town of Settler holds onto many secrets. Residents roam the streets with weirdly fashioned devices, and odd lights pulse in the night skies. People whisper of a phantom outlaw and start dying, murdered and missing their heads. On top of it all, Daelin’s sister is missing, and Daelin doesn’t know who to trust.

Earl knows more than he’s saying. He shares a notorious history with the phantom, one he’ll see remains buried. Keeping Daelin’s sister’s secrets is his only chance at redemption, and the only way to keep this world safe.

The Initiate [2]

A junction erupts between the worlds in Settler, Oregon, a rift from which horrors attack our world. The Rifters defend us.

To trust unquestioningly is the first lesson Daelin Long must learn as the newest Initiate of the Rifters. Her first day is a disaster. She stands on a deserted street in a town smaller than a city district, courting killer rocks from another world with her ancestor from the Revolutionary War. Normal no longer exists.

While she struggles, Earl Blacke grapples with atoning for his past ill deeds, running far and fast from Settler, Oregon. The Shaman of the Desert promises him redemption, and an old mine puts the possibility of a gold strike in his grasp. His luck has changed for the better, but he can’t have both.

M. Pax is author of the space adventure series The Backworlds and the contemporary science fiction series The Rifters, plus other novels and short stories.

Fantasy, science fiction, and the weird beckons to her, and she blames Oregon, a source of endless inspiration.

She ghost hunts for fun with a group of curiosity seekers, docents at Pine Mountain Observatory in the summers as a star guide, has a cat with a crush on Mr. Spock, and is slightly obsessed with Jane Austen.